


Shifting Solid Ground

by Calliatra



Category: Leverage
Genre: Banter, Five Times, Multi, POV Alternating, Polyamory Negotiations, Post-Series, Setting Boundaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-22 17:26:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4844024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calliatra/pseuds/Calliatra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times someone said no.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shifting Solid Ground

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/gifts).



_Five_

“Nuh-uh, no way, not a chance in _hell_!” Alec says firmly. Or, well, okay, he means to say it firmly, but it comes out as more of a squeak. Which he’s totally man enough to admit. “And don’t give me that look, I know that that look, I know what you’re trying and it’s not going to work. I am not, repeat, _not_ going to have sex with you while we’re all dangling from tiny wires in the ceiling! No way, not going to happen, not now, not ever, just _no_.”

“Sorry, Parker,” Eliot says, “it’s not safe.”

Parker looks a little bit outraged. “It’s totally safe! The lines can hold twice our weight, and I designed the ceiling hooks myself!”

Eliot shakes his head, totally unfazed. Like, not even a little bit fazed. It’s kind of impressive, how he does that, not that Alec’s going to tell him. “It’s not that. When you’re hangin’ free like that, even with multiple anchor points, you ain’t gonna have any sideways stability. You get pushed, you’re gonna keep swinging back ‘n’ forth until you hit something hard enough to stop you. Which is gonna be one of us. We try to do that while...,” he makes a not terribly evocative gesture, “and someone’s gonna end up getting bitten somewhere sensitive. In a bad way.”

Oh, hell, Alec hadn’t even thought of that. _Ouch_. “See, _see_? Plus, and I really can’t emphasize this enough, y’all, I _am not having sex while dangling from the ceiling_. I’m just not doing it. I don’t even think I _could_ do it. You take my feet off the ground and little Alec is going to call it a night – and you’re lucky if it’s not forever!”

“You’re no fun.” Parker sticks her lower lip out, and dammit, why did he ever tell her she looks good when she pouts? She knows his weaknesses too well.

Eliot looks at Alec and does a thing with his eyebrows that could mean either _my wig is tickling me_ , or _I’m secretly a supervillain plotting to kill you all_. When Alec doesn’t… do whatever it is Eliot wants him to do about that, he does the thing again, with even more eyebrow wigglyness.

Alec wiggles his eyebrows back in a way he hopes conveys _use your words, man._

Eliot stares at him for a second with a kind of a pissed-off confusion, then does his frustrated eye-roll thing and turns to Parker instead. “How about if Hardison and I stay on the bed and _you_ hang from the ceiling?”

Parker looks at Alec with that look, and yeah, no, there’s no way now he can ignore that look.

“That’d work, babe,” he says.

Eliot smirks. Parker grins.

 

 

* *

 

 

_Four_

“We’re not going in that way,” Parker says. “The time window’s too narrow.”

Alec frowns at the gibberish he’s got scrolling on one of the screens. “Actually, I think it could work. I could pull it off. If Eliot keeps the goons off my back, I should be able to crack the lock in thirty, maybe forty-five seconds.”

“There’ll be at least ten guys,” Parker says grimly. “They’ll have guns, and knives, and maybe other stuff we don’t know about. And they’ll know their way around the building in the dark better than you.”

Eliot bristles. They’re small-time hired muscle with no real training. Doesn’t matter what kind of weapons they have. They don’t stand a chance. “I can take them,” he says.

Parker nods. “Probably. But it’s still too risky. If you get slowed down just fifteen seconds, the security system will electrocute you. With 300 volts.”

Yeah, okay, that’s a risk. But it’s a calculated one. And he’s not about to let Hardison get fried, dammit.

“Parker,” Alec says, “we’ve been casing that place for a _month_ :” An incredibly slow and incredibly frustrating month that turned up almost no usable information.

“This is our one chance,” Eliot says.

“No,” Parker says, with absolute finality. “We’re not doing it. We’ll find another way.”

“There might not _be_ another way,” Eliot growls. That whole damn place is too tightly guarded.

“There _is_ ;” she insists. “We just have to find it.”

“And if we can’t?” Alec asks, carefully. More carefully than Eliot would have.

“Then we’re not doing it.” Parker shakes her head vehemently. “I don’t care. Not like this. I’m not letting you get hurt.”

Eliot opens his mouth, but she smothers him with a look. “ _Either_ of you. The job is important, but _we_ are more important than the job. We’re _always_ more important.” She’s breathing a bit fast, but meets their eyes defiantly. “Got it?”

They not, and yeah, Eliot thinks he does.

 

 

* *

 

 

_Three_

“Absolutely not,” Eliot says in his growly, I’m-scary-be-afraid-of-me voice.

It’s cute that he thinks that’ll work on Alec. “Come on, man, what’s your problem? It’s a security thing, you like security, you’re all about security, don’t think I don’t know you got knives stashed everywhere. You even got a knife under our bed, and I hate to tell you, man, but that’s messed up. So, like, maybe instead let me improve our security system and then you won’t need to keep your freaky-ass murder knives all over the place.”

“It’s not a security thing,” Eliot growls, “it’s a _you-spying-on-us-everywhere_ thing. That’s what’s freaky!”

Well, that’s just unfair. “Okay, no first of all, I don’t spy on you, and it’s weird that you think I do. You get that I’m a world-class hacker, right? I can hack into the FBI, the CIA, hell, I can hijack a satellite if I feel like it, and you think I’m gonna be riveted by _you taking a leak_? Come on, man. And secondly, dude, even if I did? It’s not like it’s anything I haven’t seen before, you know what I mean?”

Eliot’s hands are twitching in a kind of strangle-y way now, which might worry Alec if he didn’t get that same reaction all the time for things like updating Eliot’s phone or drinking the ‘wrong’ beer. “Hardison, _I don’t care_ , you’re not installing a _camera_ in the _bathroom_! Parker, tell him he’s not installing a camera in our bathroom.”

“You’re not installing a camera in our bathroom,” Parker says. Which, _really_ , why? What even.

“What is going on here, guys, seriously, why is this such a big deal to you?” Not that Alec objects to a bit of judicious Eliot-baiting, but normally he at least knows what he’s doing. And how far he can take it. “You didn’t have a problem with me putting cameras in the bedroom, and we get _way_ freaky in there.”

Parker shrugs. “Yeah, but those cameras are fun.”

Alec gapes at Eliot. “Seriously, man, seriously?”

Eliot glares. “Sometimes a man needs some alone time, _okay_?” he growls. “Not everyone can be a goddamn _people-_ person all the time.”

“Oh,” Alec says, because now it makes sense. Then, “You know, we’re really not using the extra rooms upstairs for anything useful. Want to help me turn them into a gym?”

 

 

* *

 

 

_Two_

“No,” Eliot says. “No ropes on me, not ever.”

“Okay,” Parker says, because it’s important that things like that are okay.

“Gotcha, that’s cool, not a problem,” Alec says.

“Got some not so great memories,” Eliot grunts, without looking at them.

Alec gets that soft look on his face that he gets sometimes when she talks about her childhood. “That’s— okay, that’s not coo, but whatever you need absolutely _is_ , okay? No ropes, got it.” Alec takes a breath. “And if you want to talk about it, man—”

“I don’t.”

“Okay, that’s fine, no worries. Just, y’know, know that me and Parker, we’re always here, okay?”

“I get it,” Eliot growls, in that way that means he really doesn’t want to talk about this.

“What about ropes on me or Alec?” Parker asks, because that’s important, too.

Eliot blinks and doesn’t answer right away. “I don’t know.”

“Okay,” Parker nods, because it is. “We’ll work it out.”

 

 

* *

 

 

_One_

“Just… not yet.” Alec won’t look at them. Won’t look up from the floor. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, or that I don’t love you. You know I do, both of you. It’s just…”

“It’s fine, Eliot says. He gets it. Hell, he more than gets it. And he can’t help feeling that he’s the one who should be apologizing here. But that’s not what any of them need right now.

Parker nods. “Yeah, totally not a problem.”

Alec doesn’t look convinced.

Eliot claps him on the shoulder. Maybe a bit awkwardly, but, hell, he’s new to thing. “Seriously, man, don’t worry about it. This is new for all of us. We’ve still got a lot to work out.”

“Yeah, I know, but— Look, it’s not that I think you’re gong to, I don’t know, steal Parker from me, or anything – not that Parker can be stolen, she’s a person, not, like, a painting or whatever – but—”

“Hardison,” Eliot growls, because this is getting ridiculous, “it’s _okay_. You ain’t gotta talk us into loving you anyway.”

“I know, I know, but it makes me feel kind of bad, okay? Like I’m all controlling and stuff, and that’s really not cool, yo.”

“What if I also only have sex with _you_ when it’s all three of us?” Parker suggests. “That way it’ll be balanced.”

Alec finally raises his eyes. “That’d be— yeah, I think that’d be good.” There’s a bit of a question there.

“Fine with me,” Eliot assures. “You sure you don’t mind, Parker?”

“Are you kidding? That way I get to have both of you every time” That’s, like, twice as awesome!” Parker grins. “But,” she adds, “if you want to, you two can totally have sex without me.”

 

 

* *

 

 

_Zero_

“You’re really sure about this?” Eliot asks, and Parker looks at Alec. They’ve already talked about this, all of them, and they all agreed, so she’s not really sure what else she’s supposed to say. Or how to say it so it’s what Eliot needs to hear. Alec is better at that.

“Yes,” Alec says, looking straight at Eliot. “Definitely.”

“Yes,” Parker says, the same way. “Are you?” It’s only fair.

Eliot takes a deep breath. “Yes.”

“Awesome,” Alec nods. “That’s really great, that’s, yeah. Good.”

Eliot looks form him to Parker like he’s maybe not sure. “Now what?” he asks, but like a challenge.

“Now,” Parker grins, hopping onto the bed, “comes the fun part!”


End file.
